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Girls and Violence: the Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence

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Girls and Violence: the Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence www.crimejusticejournal.com IJCJ 2013 2(2): 63‐79 ISSN 2202–8005 Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence Kerry Carrington Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Abstract Rises recorded for girls’ violence in countries like Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States have been hotly contested. One view is these rising rates of violence are an artefact of new forms of policy, policing, criminalisation and social control over young women. Another view is that young women may indeed have become more violent as they have increasingly participated in youth subcultural activities involving gangs and drugs, and cyber‐cultural activities that incite and reward girls’ violence. Any comprehensive explanation will need to address how a complex interplay of cultural, social, behavioural, and policy responses contribute to these rises. This article argues that there is no singular cause, explanation or theory that accounts for the rises in adolescent female violence, and that many of the simple explanations circulating in popular culture are driven by an anti‐feminist ideology. By concentrating on females as victims of violence and very rarely as perpetrators, feminist criminology has for the most part ducked the thorny issue of female violence, leaving a discursive space for anti‐feminist sentiment to reign. The article concludes by arguing the case for developing a feminist theory of female violence. Keywords Female delinquency, feminist criminology, female violence, narrowing gender gap. Global rises in female violence While males still dominate crime statistics as offenders and prisoners, a body of international and national trend data points to a consistent narrowing of the gender gap for officially reported crime and violence in countries like the United States (US), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. In the US, for instance, crime trend data from 2000 to 2009 show nearly an 18% increase in arrests of females under the age of 18 for assaults compared to just a 0.2% increase for similarly aged males (US Department of Justice 2010). During this time frame there were significantly higher increases in arrests of young females for drug abuse violations and driving under the influence compared to males. Arrests of females under the age of 18 for disorderly conduct increased by 8% while the arrests of males in this age group decreased by 8% over the same time frame.1 The US Department of Justice Study Group on girls and violence compared the rising rates of girls’ crime with victimisation and self‐report data and also found © The Author(s) 2013 Kerry Carrington: Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence reported violence for girls was rising faster than for boys, although the extent varied according to which measure was used. In England and Wales, a major study of juvenile female offending between 2000 and 2005 found that ‘the number of young female offenders has risen by approximately 18% over the past five financial years’, and that the number of violent offences for juvenile females more than doubled over the same period (Arnull and Eagle 2009: 40, 47).2 In the three year period between 2003 and 2006 rates of violence recorded for girls in England increased 78% (Youth Justice Board 2004a, 2007 in Sharpe 2012: 33). In Australia, while boys still outnumber girls under Australian juvenile justice supervision,3 the gender gap is narrowing. Taking Australia’s largest jurisdiction as an example, across a 52 year period of trend data (1960‐2012), the ratio of young women to young men appearing before the NSW Children’s Courts for criminal matters (finalised court appearances) narrowed from around one in fourteen (1:14) in 1960 to around one in four (1:4) in 2012 (see Figure 1). While changes in data definitions and counting rules over such a long time pose data quality issues, nevertheless the trend is so consistent it cannot be simply attributed to statistical artefact. 18000 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 Male criminal Female criminal Figure 1: Finalised Court Appearances Criminal Offences, by Sex, NSW Children’s Courts 1960‐ 2012 Source: NSW Children’s Court Data (1960‐2012)4 Note: Data quality issues affect the trend data due to changes in counting rules that invariably occur over such a long time frame. Crime data for girls’ violence have also been rising over the last two decades. Acts intended to cause injury (violent offences) accounted for around 36.5% of all the matters for which young females appeared before the children’s courts in NSW in 2012, compared to just 13.8% in 1989 (NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research 1989‐2012: see Figure 2). Earlier data is not comparable due to changes in the definition and recording of violent offences. By comparison, over the same time frame, the proportion of violent related offences for which juvenile males appeared before the NSW Children’s Courts rose less dramatically, from 10.7% in 1989 to 22.2% in 2012 (NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research 1989‐2012: see Figure 2). IJCJ&SD 64 Online version via www.crimejusticejournal.com © 2013 2(2) Kerry Carrington: Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 1989 1990 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Female Male Figure 2: Proportion (%) of violent offences by sex, 1989‐2012, NSW Children’s Court Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (1989‐2012) Note: Violent offences are defined as acts intended to cause injury, finalised court appearances most serious offence Another 10‐year study (1999‐2010) for the same jurisdiction, undertaken by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, came to the same conclusion that violence was rising faster for girls than boys. This study, which uses administrative byproduct data based on reports to the police, found that the number of juvenile female offenders increased by 36%, compared to an 8% increase in male juvenile offenders over the same ten year time‐frame (Holmes 2010: 6). Among the top ten offences for girls, shop‐lifting was the highest, accounting for 21% of those offences which attracted police attention. The second highest ranking offence recorded by police was non‐domestic violent assaults, accounting for 10.9% of juvenile female offenders compared to 7.1% of male juvenile offenders (Holmes 2010: 6).5 There is no doubt that officially recorded rates of violence for girls based on reports to the police have been increasing in countries like US, UK, Canada and Australia for some time. This trend appears to be triangulated by victimisation data that shows young women are assaulted predominantly by their friends or peers during early adolescence (House of Representatives Inquiry into Youth Violence 2010: 20‐21, Table 2.2) and by qualitative studies of girls violence (Jones 2008; Miller 2004; Sharpe 2012: 89).6 However, there is little agreement as to why these rates are rising (Alder and Worrall 2004; Carrington 2006; Carrington and Pereira 2009; Chesney‐Lind 1999; Reitsma‐Street 2000). The debate is evident in two contrasting papers published in Criminology, one of the world’s leading journals in this discipline. While official reports of crime indicate that the gender gap has narrowed over the last two decades, Steffensmeier and his colleagues (2005) argue that this is due largely to several net widening policy shifts that led to increases in the arrest of girls for behaviour that, in the past, was either not policed or overlooked. By comparison, their analysis shows that a similar trend is not evident in longitudinal self‐report data. In contrast, Lauristen and colleagues (2009) argue that the narrowing of the gender gap is real. Their longitudinal analysis covering the period from 1973 to 2005 compares patterns in National Crime Victimization Survey data, based on self‐reports, with those in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) that are based on police arrest data. They conclude that ‘female‐to‐male offending rate ratios for aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault have increased over time and that the narrowing of the gender gaps is very similar to patterns in UCR arrest data’ (Lauristen, Heimer and Lynch 2009: 361). While acknowledging that the narrowing of the gender gap – especially during the 1990s – was due largely to decreases in male offending rates rather than large IJCJ&SD 65 Online version via www.crimejusticejournal.com © 2013 2(2) Kerry Carrington: Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence increases in female offending rates, they concluded that the issue is real and warrants ‘serious attention in future research’ (Lauristen, Heimer and Lynch 2009: 361). A key issue in this debate is whether statistical increases in female offences are generated by less serious offences being brought into the system or changes in policy and policing that disproportionately impact upon girls (Acoca 2004; Alder and Worrall 2004; Arnull and Eagle 2009; Brown, Chesney‐Lind and Stein 2007; Carrington 2006; Muncer et al. 2001; Sharpe 2012). Sceptics point out that the large percentage rises are partly the product of small numbers and partly an effect of decreasing numbers of boys coming to the attention of the police and courts. In sum, explanations for the rising rates of female violence remain contentious (Alder and Worrall 2004; Carrington and Pereira 2009; Sharpe 2012). Are these patterns the product of new forms of social control, changing methods of recording information, changes in styles of policing and policy, increases in girls’ violence, or changes in attitudes to female offending? The following wrestles with these questions while attempting to critically assess the explanations typically offered to account for rises in girls’ violence.
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